Steam typically runs weekly deals, often one game on a midweek, and one game on a weekend.

The mass sales have been Christmastime primarily (last year and this year).

I guess this is just as good of a place as any for this link. Article about the 99 best free games of 2009.

Gamasutra - News - Opinion: The 99 Best Free Games Of 2009

Yeah. Steam usually offers weekend deals, but over the holidays they have a week or so long set of great deals and awesome daily deals.

One of the highlights of my vacation over the holidays was "refreshing" the Steam home page every day around 12 pm EST just to see what was on sale. It was like the 12 days of Christmas.

Oh God, I thought I was the only one who did that. It was indeed one of the highlights of my vacation too. I was always lost about which day it was, but I always remembered to refresh the tab with Steam in it, cause yeah, I had a Steam tab permanently open...

FM

No you weren't the only one, I was addicted to it like coke. I was making up excuses just to buy stuff. I ended up buying 12 games and one expansion pack from steam over that time. That should keep me busy all year long. FM 2010 was the most expensive thing I bought, but the others were nothing more than 10 like World in Conflict.

i can't tell you how many hours of fun i've gotten out of world in conflict and i'm not even done yet - i got stuck on the "Soviet Assault" pack with one of the earlier missions in paris - the one where you have to retake the town without destroying the church, and just haven't taken the time to go back and beat it and finish the game.

but once i do finish i fully expect it to have great replayability

I've seen defense grid mentioned a couple times and I'd also recommend Plants vs Zombies to anyone that likes tower defense style games. It's obviously a quirky game, but it's incredibly well done and addictive. It also has quite a bit of content in the game with different challenges and game modes.

Easily one of the 5 best games I played this year and IMO the most overlooked game of the year.

Yes, Plants vs Zombies is awesome, and I loved the ending. And FWIW, my kids had just as much fun as I did.

Torchlight is so fun

Damn, I had no idea how amazing those Steam deals were compared to their usual offerings. I'm really kicking myself now.

I did pick up Medieval: Total War for $5 during the 12 days, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Pay what you want deal for crayon physics deluxe.

Best gaming buy in pretty much forever for me: Elf Bowling for $1 during the Steam holiday sale. We bought a copy for both accounts (3 machines, so my wife and I each have an account) and the kids have played the absolute HECK out of it.

I thought about getting that one, but I had bought Zombie Bowling from BigFishGames a couple months before and the concept looked to be just about the same. I also played a whole lot of ZB, lots of silly fun. Don't know if it's the same but I got a great kick out of the rag doll effect when my Zombie pins got knocked over... :D

FM

75% off the King's Bounty games at Steam until Thursday:
Steam Search

FM

That's a good deal on some good games. Highly recommended for those who haven't played KB before.

Cool beans. I've always wanted to try out King's Bounty. Will I be okay as far as the story line if I just purchase the King's Bounty: The Legend Armored Princess or should I get King's Bounty: The Legend too?

You should be fine story wise, but if you don't own either the gold edition has both games for $11.25, so probably worth it since Armored Princess is $9.99 by itself.

Thanks for this. My son loved the first one.

Argh.......you guys are going to drive me to the poor house $11.95 at a time! I can't resist interesting looking games this cheap!

I agree. A roleplaying/strategy game is always hard to resist. Damn you Frogman!

Besides that, the one negative I've had against Steam is that I can't trade my games after completion. Yes, I am aware of the positive of Steam, but it is sure nice that I can trade the family PS3 and Wii games on Goozex and get a high quality game in return (although there can be a long wait for some).

That is definitely a drawback. Do you know if the trade-in market for used PC games is anywhere near as robust as it is for console games?

Sorry, but I owe you like a gazillion of them, so there ya go. :p


but then again, how many good PS3 or Wii games do you get to pay $5 or $10 for? It's not so bad to discard a digital download and not get anything in return once you're through the game when you've payed so little to get it...

FM

dola, I'm also now considering the fact that maybe putting the Steam news RSS feed on my Google reader might have been the death of my wallet... :)

FM

Keep us posted, FM. :)

LOL, you know I will. I'm downloading a demo of King's Bounty right now. I really don't need a new game right now with Torchlight entertaining me a great deal, two Titan Quest games on deck and tons others, but it looks so... pretty and interesting. I'm just afraid it might be too much for my little integrated GeForce 6150.

Demo's not available on Steam but here's where I'm getting it from:
King's Bounty: The Legend Demo - Big Download

Download speed is fairly decent...

FM

I would say consoles get the edge. There is still a market for them, but it really depends on the title. There are still a number of titles that still have value after all these years. Currently System Shock, Riven, Dead Space hover around what you pay for a $30 game for each one. So you can easily use that to trade for a used $60 PS3 or XBox.

A trick that I use is go to my local Half Price Books (or whatever local trading book/music/game store is) and buy the PC Games that are in high demand at a cheap price and trade it online in exchange for something I am looking for. Since 1000 points is roughly equivalent to a $60 used game, the least points on a game is 100 points ($6). So if you can find a number of cheap 250-600 point games for the PC that is in demand, you can score yourself that $60 title you want.

I played the demo. It's like a really smart version of Hero's of Might and Magic. There are a lot of combinations between the different monsters you have fight for you and your hero that can sway battles. I think I played it on normal difficulty and was barely making it through fights. I know I didn't want to plunk down $40 at the time, but less than $12 for the gold pack is too hard to pass up.

So I add that to my stack of Steam games that I need to play at least a couple hours each to make sure I got my money's worth. The way I look at it, I probably spent that much on Donkey Kong in one evening when I was a kid.

I'll probably get it. Looks fun and the turn-based, fantasy game is right in my wheel house, as they say.

I, too, have a major backlog. Most of Dragon's Age, Bioschock, Mass Effect, and FM 2010 are all in the que and have never been played (not to mention "Dawn Of War II" that I bought last February and have never played). Throw the upcoming Bioshock and Mass Effect sequels into the mix and I wont have a realistic shot at playing "Kings Bounty" until 2012.

well, downloaded and installed the demos for the original game and the sequel and while the Armored Princess was a bit rougher at first and I had to tune down some detail, both worked quite fine. I really liked the feel of turn based battles.

Just bought the gold pack and both games are going on the "Steam stack o' games to fool around wit". Sigh... Right now most of my precious time off is spent with Torchlight though.

Gotta say I'm an odd one though. Thinking real hard, last RPG I remember playing was Ultima III back when I was maybe 16, so some 23 years ago. For some reason, before I really paid attention to what Steam was offering, I figured nothing would run on my decent, yet already three years old HP desktop PC with an integrated piece of crap video card. Because of that, or maybe the other way around, I kept playing only sports sims but got kinda burned out in the last year or so. Turns out there's still some fairly recent games who run quite decently on that machine and I've been adding tons of them to the stack. :)

FM

Company of Heroes Gold: $14.99 at Impulse
Gothic II Gold Edition: $14.99 at Steam

CoH gold for 14.99 - that's prolly less than i'd pay for CoH: Tales of Valor

haha

You can get Gothic II Gold at GOG for 9.99 all the time. FYI

Steam Midweek Madness is Men of War at 66% off:
Package: Men of War: Gold Edition

FM

can i kill things in that in case i get frustrated tonight? i might need to find a new FPS for my new laptop (I think Call of Duty Modern Warfare I ought to run, as should the last WWII one that I never ended up getting on my last laptop).

edit: okay, clearly I can. Game got an 80...so it was decent?

Steam has AI War: Fleet Command for $9.99. I wasn't sure about this game since I'm not normally a RTS fan but this game is a blast.

Picked up Call of Duty: World at War last night and WOWSERS. Beautiful. And fucking hard (even on normal), or else I'm just way out of practice (probably a combo of both).

Definitely will satisfy that itch.

Will grab the demo for Men of War tonight and try it out too...at that price it's hard not to (damn Steam!!!)

I realize this has become damn-near exclusively a PC thread... but just thought i'd mention that Amazon is doing all XBOX 360 gold box deals tomorrow.

I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I've been playing it too, but not as wowsered. I love the COD series, but maybe it's because I just finished MW2 that this one just feels "ok".

MW2?

Modern Warfare 2

He was talking about the Cash on Delivery series, but it's not as great as Minimum Wage 2. :D

eh, i heard MW2 singleplayer wasn't that great

Solo is pretty meh. The multiplayer is fun though. So tired of shooting militia in south american shit holes. The airport level was seriously fucked.

exactly. and i probably wouldn't be willing to devote the exclusive time necessary for multiplayer...i like to multitask as i play...play for a few minutes then check the forum or chat with some friends. can't do that if i'm playing multiplayer

A lot of good specials for the next 28 hours at GoGamer for their 48 Hour Madness sale. A few highlights:
Mass Effect 2 (PC) - $41.90
BioShock 2 (PS3) - $51.90
Splinter Cell: Conviction (XBox 360) - $44.90
Dragon's Age: Origins (PC) - $34.90
No More Heroes 2 (Wii) - $44.90
Dante's Inferno (XBox 360) - $51.90

Others:
Sins of a Solar Empire (PC) - $16.99 at Impulse
Braid (PC) - $9.99 at Direct2Drive

I loved the solo campaign in MW2 (MW1 too, for that matter). They are just ludicrously short

FWIW, Braid regular price is at $9.99 over on Steam.

Also, Gamersgate has a Sid Meier week going on. Nothing we've not seen before, and sometimes with better prices, but all Meier titles are 50% off.

FM

re: amazon deals today

Fallout 3 for Xbox 360 is live for 17.99 right now.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=cs_top_nav_gb27

I'm like 30 hours into the game and feel like im knee deep in the pool at best. Great price for it.